Collapse

From groundbreaking writer and thinker, Jared Diamond comes an epic, visionary new book on the mysterious collapse of past civilizations - and what this means for our future. Why do some societies flourish, while others founder? What happened to the people who made the forlorn long-abandoned statues of Easter Island or to the architects of the crumbling Maya pyramids? Will we go the same way, our skyscrapers one day standing derelict and overgrown like the temples at Angkor Wat? Bringing together new evidence from a startling range of sources and piecing together the myriad influences, from climate to culture, that make societies self-destruct, "Collapse" also shows how unlike our ancestors we can benefit from our knowledge of the past and learn to be survivors.

ISBN 0140279512   Weight (grammes) 440 ISBN13 9780140279511 (What's this?)   Reprint date 22-Sep-2011 12:00:00 am Publisher Penguin Books Ltd   Published in London Imprint Penguin Books Ltd   Series title Penguin Press Science S. Format Paperback   Height (mm) 198 Publication date 26 Jan 2006   Width (mm) 129 DEWEY 304.28   Spine width (mm) 26 DEWEY edition DC22   Academic level General Pages 616

Blackwell review:
Jared Diamond wears his intelligence very lightly and in both 'Guns, Germs and Steel' and 'Collapse' he uses a very broad brush. Thought-provoking yet accessible we especially enjoyed the sense of proper perspective that gives the (western) reader a sense of humbleness and realisation of the good fortune that has lead to our comfortable position in the world. 'Collapse' looks at a broad cross section of peoples & cultures in history in order to enable us to understand how future societies might survive. 'Guns, Germs and Steel' answers the most obvious, the most important, yet the most difficult question about human history: why history unfolded so differently on different continents. Geography and biography, not race, moulded the contrasting fates of Europeans, Asians, Native Americans, sub-Saharan Africans, and aboriginal Australians. An ambitious synthesis of history, biology, ecology and linguistics, Guns, Germs and Steel is one of the most important and humane works of popular science.



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